Maynooth University PME2 Guided Reflection 1

Reflection

If you are a student teacher, reflection probably features prominently in your course work. This is to encourage you to continuously reflect and improve in your teaching practices during the course but also to prepare you for teaching after university and student teaching.

Reflection is paramount throughout the course of your teaching career and there is a strong chance you will be asked about the topic in interviews for teaching positions.

As part of year two in the Professional Master of Education in Maynooth University (2019-2021), there are thee guided reflections to complete.

What is a guided reflection?

A guided reflection is a reflection presented through prompts and questions. These are in place to help ‘guide’ your reflection so you consider many parts of your teaching and university experience and not just focus in on one aspect you think is important. This reflection will generally have a word count to encourage you to write enough but not so much where you’re writing a reflective thesis.

For these guided reflections, we were required to just reflect on our experiences based on the prompts provided. We did not have to engage with academic literature. This is not an academic reflection. Additionally, you do not need to use ‘fancy, academic language’ to do well in these reflections. If that is your writing style, brilliant. However, it is more important that you focus on your reflection and expressing your experiences rather that get bogged down by flowery language which can sometimes hinder your reflection/writings.

It is very important that you truly reflect on your experiences in an honest manner rather than writing what you think the marker wants to read. My guided reflection is a perfect example of a very individualised reflection.

Here are the prompts for Maynooth University’s guided inspection one and how I answered them.

Maynooth University’s Guided Reflection 1 Prompts and My Reflective Answers

• As you enter PME 2, what is most different about you today compared to when you started in your ITE(initial teacher education) program?
• What do you expect you will be good at this year? 
  • As a teacher 
  • As a student 
• What do you anticipate will be your most significant internal struggles? 
  • As a student 
  • As a teacher 
• What piece of advice would you give to yourself for the year? 
  • As a teacher 
  • As a student 

1. As you enter PME 2, what is most different about you today compared to when you started in your ITE program? 

I have entered PME 2 a very different person to when I had entered PME 1 last year and it has very little to do with my development as a teacher. Upon entering PME 1, I had been very sick which was building up for almost two years. I was very weak, fragile, malnourished, exhausted, and in a severe amount of pain, both physically and mentally. This is not even the tip of the iceberg of the plethora of symptoms I had been suffering from. Reflecting back on that time, I should have never started the PME programme considering how sick I was. However, it was only halfway through PME 1 that I was diagnosed with an autoimmune condition. For those who are healthy individuals, it can be quite hard to understand the high a sick person can get from the happiness and relief experienced from being told how sick you really are.

Entering PME 2, I have a whole diagnosis behind me. That diagnosis includes consultants, nurses, pharmacists, family, medications, and Maynooth University’s access office as part of a support mechanism. Following on from this, while I am not yet strong, I am much stronger than I had been several months ago, I am more equipped to deal with the changing variables that make up a classroom environment, and I am in a better position to handle university requirements.

Indeed, my journey with my illness has greatly shaped my perspective on what is really important in daily life which I will explain through an analogy. This analogy is one that I came across online through social media, however it has really stuck with me as I believe it is such a good perspective of balance. The variables in your life are represented by balls you have to juggle. Some of these balls are plastic and some of these balls are glass. If you drop the glass ball, it will break, however if you drop the plastic ball, it will not break. You cannot juggle every ball (i.e., variable), so sometimes you have to let the plastic ball drop in order to catch the glass ball. The glass balls are the important variables. Following on from this analogy, I have an improved sense of balance which will really serve to help through teaching placement, university requirements, and my health’s demands. Hopefully, this perspective will help prevent burnout as I will be able to recognise the glass balls I need to catch and the plastic balls I can let drop.

2.What do you expect you will be good at this year? A) As a teacher and B) As a student 

A) I believe this year I will see a much more confident teacher. I already feel much more equipped to walk into a class this year than I did last year and it has less than five percent to do with college and placement experience. Following on from my earlier explanation about my health problems, it had a major impact on my ability to walk into a class, facilitate learning, develop a positive rapport, and deal with any misbehaviour in class. As a stronger and healthier person this semester, I am and will continue to walk into class with a much clearer sense on how to engage with students in a positive manner and deal with misbehaviours that inevitably arise rather than focusing on how long I will be able to stand for before I might collapse.

B) Following on from this, as a student, I expect I will be a lot more engaged with lectures, seminars, tutors than the previous year for similar reasons already outlined above. Due to this increased engagement, I also expect I will be able to tackle assignments much more effectively with a stronger sense of purpose, clarity, and understanding.

3.What do you anticipate will be your most significant internal struggles as a teacher and as a student?

My most significant internal struggle as a teacher and as a student cannot be separated. As a teacher, I see it as my goal to tailor the lesson to want the students in my class need based on their ability and their engagement to the methodologies used and the topic being studied in hopes of maximising their learning in the class. However, as a student, I also have to consider my placement and university tutor and their requirements. The space between these two roles is a cause for great tension sometimes, particularly during covid-19 classrooms. In this sense, while considering tutors’ constructive criticism, I am ultimately going to have to go with what works in my classroom for the type of students I have rather than change methodologies for the purpose of achieving a certain grade.

4. What piece of advice would you give to yourself for the year? As a teacher; As a student.

As I have mentioned in question one, I hope to recognise the glass balls I need to carry and the plastic balls I can let drop. However, I am also a stubborn hypocrite and I will probably try to juggle everything. In this sense, my advice to myself would be to stop being a stubborn hypocrite and only juggle what you can effectively manage. Do not compare the amount of work you can do to the amount of work another can do because everyone has different glass balls and a different quantity of glass balls in their life.

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As you can see from outlined above, my reflection is very much tailored to my individual experience and much of it is not actually centred around teaching, but rather an obstacle which in the past, present, and possibly future has greatly impacted my ability

I hope this example of a guided reflection helps you guys! Feel free to comment and share and check out my instagram @eliseteaches.

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